


Island Living

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (not explicitly but yeah), 2016 US Presidential Election, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:41:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: In the wake of a pivotal election gone bad, disconsolate speechwriter Enjolras tries out a new coffeeshop.(There are no islands in this story.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [Vito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vito), for your very helpful insights—at the end especially!
> 
> Thanks also to that [sign photo](http://67.media.tumblr.com/354812debb62b35237001aca73b73831/tumblr_ogldkeyM2I1ua4leyo1_1280.jpg) that started this thing brewing.

**Island Living**

_“Apocalypse got you down? Try espresso!”_

Enjolras almost trips over the sign. When it, like an oblivious greyhound, looms into his field of vision at knee-height, he stumbles back, manages not to fall, reads it, and winces. 

It’s been an agonizing couple of days since the election. It’s like someone’s died—no one quite wants to catch anyone else’s eye, because the pain there is too close to the pain gnawing at your lungs. The burden of unsaid words weighs like stones in the stomach, but it’s too hard to say them without hurling them like weapons.

He has, in fact, for this very reason, passed up his usual coffee shop. His friends at the Musain will be tallying abuse—of Muslims, Latinos, gay people, women. Musichetta’s dedicated the back wall to what she’s calling the Hatemap. It’s already clotted with incident tags. It’s important and horrifying and really hard to confront when you’ve only been awake for 20 minutes. 

Today, Enjolras is hoping he can at least wait to pick up the same crushing conversations until he gets to work. There, at least, there’s a little hope. He’s never been gladder to work for a blue-state progressive, nor to see every fucking county of that state light up blue for her. Sure, the ship’s sinking, but at least he gets to watch from one of the lifeboats. Most people aren’t so lucky. And plenty of them, he thinks, reflecting on Musichetta’s map, are rooting for the sea.

A passerby’s shoulder clips his own, and Enjolras returns to himself. Ah. Here he is, standing in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, arms folded hard across the buttoned front of his red autumn coat, glowering at a sign.

Because _yes_ , the apocalypse has fucking got him down. And he could really use some coffee.

He shoulders through the easy-swinging cafe door. He walks past this one every day, but hasn’t been in for years. While markedly more classy than the Musain, it’s a little grungier than the brass-and-glass cafes he frequents during the workdays, where it’s hard not to bump into state legislators and policy analysts at the milk counter. The clientele here, filling most of the little tables with their newspapers and tablets, look entirely uninterested in striking up conversation with the newcomer in business clothes. This is comforting.

“Whaddaya want?” mutters the guy at the register, back half-turned away as he wipes down the steamer of an espresso machine.

“Just a coffee.”

“You got a cup?”

“Oh.” Enjolras doesn’t forget things, but he’s been forgetting a _lot_ this last few days. “Shit. I must have left—”

“No prob, man.” The guy nods his curly head sideways to indicate the wall stacked with mugs and paper goods. “Turns out we have some.” Then his eyes land, for the first time, on Enjolras, and his whole body shifts and stiffens away from him. He scrubs at the stubborn crust of foam on the steamer for another moment before asking, “You want that for here?”

Enjolras is on the verge of saying no, but he’s not meeting his boss till noon, and _paper cups_. “Yeah. Yes, please.”

His coffee comes in a tall earthenware mug. It’s strong and black and just the fucking thing. 

He takes it to one of the standing tables that rings an exposed support beam further back in the cafe. There’s room for his laptop; skipping email, he opens the speech he and Lamarque started drafting yesterday, glances through her comments, and gets to work revising.

 _“Let no one doubt,”_ he mutters to himself as he types, “ _our commitment to those amongst us who are most vulnerable.”_ Around him, people seem to come and go, but he is on a roll. He churns through a few solid minutes of content and starts the push toward closure. “ _It is my firm belief ... my firm belief that the people of this great state will never be content to love only their neighbors. Here, we also say, ‘I love my neighbor’s neighbor,’ and ‘I love the person who is not my neighbor today but may be my neighbor tomorrow,’ and ‘I love... I love...”_

“The poor fucks who don’t _have_ neighbors?” suggests a voice very near his ear. 

Enjolras jumps and is steadied by a firm arm across his back.

“Sorry!” The voice and arm belong to the guy from the counter, who is now holding Enjolras by the upper arm with a wary look, as though maybe afraid Enjolras will startle-response punch him if he lets go. 

Enjolras shakes his head. “No, I was just—” He gestures at the computer. “Caught up.”

“Whatcha writing? An editorial?”

“Speech.”

The guy inclines his head skeptically. “You’re not a politician.”

Enjolras isn’t sure whether this is an insult. “I work for one.” 

“Cool.” Usually people ask which, demand insider details, ask for favors. “Have a bagel?”

Sure enough, the guy’s offering a bagel piled high with cream cheese and sliced vegetables. It looks unreasonably beautiful. Enjolras is suddenly and insistently aware that he hasn’t eaten since midday yesterday. Food has felt unimportant of late.

“Wow,” he says, “uh, I didn’t order that, but if no one else—”

“It’s for you,” the guy says, plonking the plate down onto the wooden table beside Enjolras’s computer. Whoever used to be there has obviously vacated the space. “But I forgot to charge you for the coffee.” 

Enjolras digs out some dollars from the pocket of his coat and hands them over. The guy says "Thanks,” but makes no move to leave.

“Can I use that line?” Enjolras asks. “What you said about neighbors?”

“You honor me with the very request,” the guy says, grinning. 

Enjolras leans back over his keyboard. _“and we say ‘I love the neighborless, who need our love most of all.”_

“Yeah!” the guy affirms sarcastically. “That’s pretty much exactly what I said. Now,” he leans an elbow on the high table, inclining himself toward Enjolras, “eat something.” Up close, his eyes are dark and bleary, brows heavy, stubble uneven, hair a tremulous mess. There is something hypnotic—something that calls to mind biblical prophets, or gladiators—in the way the generous kink of the nose draws the gaze downward to the full lips. To stop his staring, Enjolras grabs the sandwich and takes a bite.

It’s delicious. It’s toasty and crunchy, runny and creamy, crisp and tart and rich and fresh all at once. It’s like a crash-course on flavor and texture. “My god,” he says. There’s nothing at all fancy about this, but what the hell does fancy matter? Enjolras cannot recall a single taste from yesterday’s Michelin-starred lunch with the senator. Since the national defeat, everything has tasted like nothing. 

“Yeah?” The guy raises an eyebrow. 

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, and the guy looks so legitimately _curious_ about Enjolras’s response that Enjolras starts to smile—not to make the guy happy but because that look and this mouthful of food and this city full of likeminded people suddenly feel real and uplifting, and for the first time in days, Enjolras feels actually capable _of_ smiling, and then this chain of thoughts reminds him of the awfulness, and that causes the smile to freeze midway into something that suddenly feels halfway to crying.

“Yep,” the guy nods, taking in Enjolras’s twisted face. “Yep.” He nods his head sideways toward the coffee counter, that quizzical expression gone now, replaced by what looks a lot like the same awful resignation Enjolras is trying to escape. “We’re fucked.” Rapping his knuckles on the wooden tabletop, he turns as if to leave.

“No!” Enjolras bursts out, grabbing at the front of the guy’s shirt. “No, we are going to fucking _make it—_ what’s your name?”

“Grantaire?” the guy says, looking down at where Enjolras’s hand grips the faded, blue-striped cloth.

“Enjolras,” Enjolras says brusquely. “And Grantaire, we are going to make it because this is the only life we get and everything that’s ever been easy for us was easy because someone else suffered so we wouldn’t have to, and this is _our_ time to make the world less terrible. And it sucks so hard that it’s the same damn shit, this shit that we’ve been able to pretend was dead and buried come back like a fucking zombie army of undead hate, but come on, should this surprise us? 

“Hate doesn’t change. It’s opportunistic and exploitative—a tool for the powerful, and a placebo for the powerless. There’s only so many things we can hate each other for. We know the what, and we know the why. There’s no one better prepared to fix this shit than we are, and if we don’t unfuck us, no one will. I don’t know how many of us have been hiding in a fog since the election. I know I have. It’s hard to feel anything. I don’t even know _what_ to feel. But we need to feel it all: angry and destructive and betrayed and protective and fucking _invested_ , because if we just feel sad, well, then you’re right. Then, we’re fucked.”

Without meaning to, he’s sunk another hand into the soft folds of Grantaire’s shirt and dragged him close, so that he’s yelling right into Grantaire’s face. Grantaire’s eyes, at the same level as his, are wide, and his body is hot and near. Other people in the cafe seem to be clapping.

Oh crap. Yelling again. It’s his area of prowess—Lamarque _did_ hire him directly from the soapbox where she met him at a rally a few years back—but it’s also unseemly in a little cafe. Also, the manhandling is distinctly uncool and borderline illegal. 

Enjolras lets go like he’s been burned. Grantaire doesn’t look particularly troubled, though, at being roughed up by a stranger. 

Brightly, he inquires, “So, lemme get this straight—we thought racism and everything was dead, but it turns out it’s, like, _not_?”

Not always expert at noticing all the key details of a situation at once, Enjolras is just now piecing together that he’s been shouting all this in the face of a man who, if physical appearance is any indication—and it _is_ , because that’s a bigot’s first refuge—endures in an average week or so as much hate speech as Enjolras has had to hear in his whole life. He suffers a shameful vision of another item for Musichetta’s map: “White guy shouts at brown guy in coffeeshop; bystanders cheer.”

“Shit,” he says, “I didn’t mean... I mean, look, I _get_ it, but I obviously don’t get it all—”

“And _you’re_ the guy who’s gonna unfuck everything?”

“Not me. No. But the Senator might, so the best thing I can do—”

“Fuck _yeah_ he is _,_ ” the woman behind the coffee counter interjects. “You ready to fight for me, boy?”

“Meh,” Grantaire says, kneading experimentally at Enjolras’s upper arm. “We’re gonna have to toughen him up before we throw him in the ring.”

Grantaire’s sly grin sits oddly in Enjolras’s gut. He half suspects a sucker-punch is coming. He’d deserve it.

The woman at the counter calls back, “Think you can drag Savior-Complex out of here?”

Grantaire tosses her a thumbs-up and says to Enjolras, “Let’s go.”

“I am so sorry,” Enjolras tries to say, but Grantaire shakes his head.

“You heard her. Out.”

Enjolras crams his laptop back into its bag and follows Grantaire to the front door. His skin feels hot under the gaze of the other patrons.

Outside, it’s as grey and cloudy as when Enjolras came in, but now the cool is a relief. 

Again, Enjolras tries to apologize. “That was out of line,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”

“What the fuck you talking about?” Grantaire laughs. “We love that shit. But man, you’re right, you’ve got to feel things.” He shoves Enjolras back a step, and Enjolras feels a gloriously bright spark of indignation. It matches the fresh sparkle in Grantaire’s eyes. “See? Feels good, right?” Grantaire looks around at the flow of humans circulating past them on the sidewalk. He glances right, glances left, then seems to make up his mind. “Come here.”

There’s a narrow alley beside the cafe, gated with a black grate. Grantaire unlocks it with a keycode, stands back so that Enjolras can squeeze in, and then follows him down the long path. Before the alley dead-ends, there are two doors in the side of the cafe building. 

“Wait,” Grantaire says at the first, a hand on Enjolras’s shoulder pushing him roughly against the other building’s wall at his back so Grantaire can shimmy past him. Bobbing past, his hair carries a subtle fragrance, warm and rich, gone too fast to name. Grantaire unlocks the second door with a physical key. 

“Get in here,” he beckons.

It’s a storeroom, dark and cool and full of the lovely smells of roasted coffee beans and baking supplies.

Enjolras is confused. 

“What am I supposed to—”

“You want to feel things?” From the dim interior, Grantaire is definitely glaring at him.

“I guess. Yeah! But if this is some kind of, I don’t know, _fight club_ , well, I—” he imagines Grantaire punching him, and the flurry of emotional and physical responses that triggers makes him suddenly unsure about his wishes. “But, I... I have a job, and I can’t go in looking like someone just worked me over.” His hands twitch. He’s never thrown a punch in his life, but who knows? Every time Grantaire pushes him, his stomach lurches. Maybe he’d like to take a beating for once; if nothing else, it would force him to set aside the ideals for a few minutes in base defense of the raw physical fact of his body. Maybe it feels good, when all else has gone to hell, to ball up your fists and lunge.

“I won’t leave any marks,” Grantaire smirks, reaching up to pull the chain of the bare bulb overhead. His formidable body fills the space below the dull yellow light. “Shut the door, will you?”

Enjolras shuts the door and latches it from within. He carefully sets his laptop bag on a stack of flour bags, then begins to unbutton his coat.

“How does that feel?” Grantaire asks.

“What? Taking off my jacket?”

“Yeah.” Grantaire is scrutinizing the operation, hand on hip, which makes Enjolras a little uneasy. He isn’t accustomed to people watching him undress.

“I don’t know.” It’s a puzzling question. “Normal?”

Grantaire reaches for him then. He pushes Enjolras’s hands aside, his own fingers sure, and slides a button free of its hole.

Enjolras’s breath catches in his throat.

Grantaire undoes another button. “Now?” 

He’s definitely feeling something uncommon now, but it’s not the urge to apologize, and it’s not the urge to punch.

Another button. It’s a long coat. The lowest button closes at upper thigh. Grantaire’s hands linger above it on the soft red wool, waiting to unfasten the coat completely. It has been a long time since anyone had their hands this close to Enjolras’s cock. 

“Oh shit,” Enjolras manages. “I don’t think I want to fight you.”

Grantaire’s laugh rings through the little room. It’s low and melodious and promising. “No? ‘Cause I’m down for whatever. I’m easy.”

“I... No. Not if there’s another way.” 

Grantaire finally slips the last button loose. Enjolras shrugs the coat off and tosses it aside.

“Holy fuck,” Grantaire says, wide-eyed and staring at Enjolras’s basic workwear—slim shirt, tie, slacks. “There are so many ways.”

He looks so desperate and ardent, so purely concerned with Enjolras, that for a second time this morning, Enjolras cannot help but smile. Grantaire falls to his knees.

“I’m going to suck you,” he announces. “Is that cool? If I suck you?”

“Um.” Enjolras looks down at the tousled black head, at the upraised eyes, and he is really not sure how they got here, but he’s been feeling that sentiment a lot lately, and this time, for once, it seems like it’s going to end up the right way. But really, shouldn’t _he_ be the one to get Grantaire off? To unbutton Grantaire’s shirt, untie the folded-over black apron, run hands across the skin of his chest, hear the thudding within. “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “I _want_ to suck you. So?”

Further objection, Enjolras hastily convinces himself, is futile. “Absolutely. Yes. Yes, please.”

Grantaire’s hands, so slow and teasing with his coat, make swift business of his belt and fly. Even so, his cock is hard by the time it springs free. Grantaire grins up at him.

“Tell me if you can’t feel anything,” he jokes, and opens his mouth to take Enjolras in.

The little storeroom is everything in counterpoint. It’s as cold as Grantaire’s mouth is hot, as dryly wholesome as this is wet and urgent and—“Oh!” Enjolras moans, letting his shoulders stretch back as Grantaire sinks further forward onto him—as confining as this marvelous human touch is boundless. Grantaire’s tongue presses against the underside as the head of Enjolras’s cock finds the soft resistance of his throat. 

Since the election, he's almost forgotten what it feels like to be fully present in his life. But he feels it now. Which is ridiculous, he realizes, trying to brush the thought away like an interloping butterfly; this is entirely abnormal for him. He is not a person who accepts backroom blowjobs. 

He’s fiery, yes, but _responsible_ fiery.

His hands clench and unclench at his sides. Grantaire is moaning around his cock, and Enjolras’s own noises seem to fill the space. He feels off-kilter, seismically off-kilter, as though he could raise islands from the ocean fully-formed.

Slowing and deepening the suction, Grantaire pulls off long enough to say, “Touch me.”

Enjolras didn’t realize he was waiting for the invitation, but apparently his hands did. With alacrity, they spring to his neck and shoulders, thick and underlain with ropy muscle. Grantaire groans. Enjolras presses harder into the muscles of Grantaire’s shoulders and is gratified to feel Grantaire swallow him even deeper. Grantaire’s hands have kneaded their way up the back of Enjolras’s trousers and are tight around his ass, holding him where he is.

Grantaire is so strong. Now that Enjolras knows to look for it, he sees the hard lines of muscle through the thin cloth of his shirt. 

Enjolras is disappearing into this. All he has to do is be here, feel. For this one moment, there’s nothing to solve. His heart hammers with the knowledge that this will not last. Soon—very soon, approaching swift and inexorable—he’ll come and this will be over, and he’ll be back in the unreality of real life. But now, with this man (for god knows what reason) bringing him off, he can immerse himself in joy, twin to sorrow, and in so doing, better know both.

His hand has migrated into Grantaire’s coarse curls. His fingers tug a little at the hair, holding back as Grantaire pushes in, and Grantaire strains against the fingers and mumbles something that sounds like, “Fuck yes.”

Enjolras’s field of vision floods with color as he gets close—the colors of the flag in giant rivers, spilling over hillsides and valleys in his mind, a patriotic natural disaster. It’s terrifying and it’s beautiful and Enjolras gasps to realize the sounds he’s making. “Oh god,” he chokes out, “I’m going to be loud.”

“Mm-hmm,” Grantaire hums eager encouragement. “Mm-hmmm.” The sound vibrates through Enjolras, who cries out and cannot restrain his hips, which rock hard and irregular into Grantaire. His mind’s gone fully red. Red, rippling brave and bright, brave as the hope fanning its sparks to life in his chest. Brave as signing on for a long and brutal fight. Brave as happiness. 

It’s happiness that tips him over the edge. He comes yelling, his hands cupped around the sides of Grantaire’s head so that he feels the tiny muscles twitch at the hinge of Grantaire’s jaw as he swallows the last of it.

And then Grantaire pulls off, and Enjolras expects him to stand, but no, he just remains before Enjolras on his knees, lips dark and face flushed. 

Enjolras lets his breathing slow down before he hauls Grantaire back to his feet.

“You feel that?” Grantaire grins at him. And _how_? The unreality is rushing back on bands of icy wind; inwardly, Enjolras's body is urging retreat. None of this makes sense.

“What do you want, Grantaire?” Enjolras demands. It comes out too rough.

Other than a deep creasing of brow, Grantaire appears unperturbed. What looks like a hard-fought internal debate ensues. Finally, Grantaire says, “I want you to keep feeling things. Evade despair. It’s got enough of us already.”

From such a man, earnestness can sound like a joke. 

Enjolras is pretty sure, though, that Grantaire’s not joking.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

Grantaire laughs. “You, Protector of the Future, can do anything you fucking like with me.” His eyes roll heavenward. “Except I only have like three minutes.”

Enjolras goes in for the kiss. Grantaire kisses with a surprising ardor tempered by shyness; it’s sweet and lush with promise. He takes tiny gulps of air, like he’s unwilling to separate his lips from Enjolras for more than a second at a time. Except then he pushes him away, hard.

“Break’s over.”

Grantaire sees him off at the metal gate. 

“Save us all,” he says. “If, like, your belief in humanity flags again, you know where I’m at.”

The grate of the fence separates them. Enjolras shoves his hands into the deep pockets of his coat and is surprised to find that one holds a warm, foil-wrapped bundle. “You work tomorrow?” Enjolras asks.

“Sure do.”

“Good.” Enjolras is glad of the grate; without it, he’d be pressing Grantaire up against that alley wall and sucking at his lips again. “I owe you some uplift.”

“Nah man,” Grantaire says, squaring up. “I owe _you_ fighting lessons.” He throws one swift punch toward the gate, and turns abruptly away.

Enjolras shoulders his bag and strides off in the direction of the senator’s office. The streets are still crowded—it’s not even mid-morning—and if all the hustle-and-bustle sounds of the morning don’t exactly give him hope, neither does the vacant pit seem to lurk quite so close before him. He smiles at nothing, catches himself, and then, hell, he can’t stop himself: he steps out of the crowd and looks back.

In front of the cafe, Grantaire’s kneeling over the sign that drew Enjolras in in the first place, now flattened; some less fortunate walker must have toppled it. How has this morning been possible? 

Possibility is seeming increasingly irrelevant to Enjolras’s life. Possibility be damned, it happened. And what happened is what matters.

Having righted the sign, Grantaire stands and surveys the long street before him. When his eyes catch Enjolras’s red coat, his whole face lifts.

Enjolras is still within hollering distance. 

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Grantaire yells, “Hey! Keep moving! Those hearts and minds aren’t going to win themselves.” 

Enjolras throws a mock salute and reenters the the sidewalk throngs. 

Let the unfucking begin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> If you're looking for something to do now, please check out [HOLY FUCK THE ELECTION](http://www.holyfucktheelection.com/) and help unfuck some shit.


End file.
